Big West Conference commissioner Dennis Farrell, left, presents the 2018 championship trophy to UC Riverside men’s soccer coach Tim Cupello after UCR defeated UC Davis on penalty kicks on Nov. 10, 2018 in Riverside. After the coronavirus cancellations, the finances of the conference and its programs will take up much of his final spring. (SCNG file photo)

After four decades of affiliation with what is now known as the Big West Conference, and the last 28 years as the conference’s commissioner, Farrell had announced his retirement in December. The idea was that the springtime would be a coast to the finish, his biggest task being to leave things in proper order for whoever his successor might be.

Uh, guess again.

The effects of the coronavirus pandemic snapped everyone in sports to attention two weeks ago and brought college athletics to a screeching halt, with a financial impact that is still being sorted through. Now the task is to attempt to plan for a future about which no one is quite sure.

The Big West was already facing transition with two new schools, Cal State Bakersfield and UC San Diego, joining in the fall. And now a conference that is a coupon-clipper, in comparison with more famous and more prosperous conferences, finds its financial lifeline frayed.

In the wake of the cancellation of the NCAA Tournament, the association announced this week that its distribution to schools and conferences would be $225 million instead of the expected $600 million. The Big West’s share of that isn’t certain yet, but Farrell estimated it would be around $4.6 million.

“The number one topic,” Farrell said earlier in the week, “is how do we deal with what’s expected to be severe budgetary cuts that our member institutions and everyone across the country (will) have to deal with, at least on a temporary basis for the 2020-21 academic year.

“We’re starting to put together some options for the membership to consider going forward. And that’s what will probably be the No. 1 topic of all of our spring meetings.”

It is an especially vexing question in the Big West, with its wide variance of programs’ athletic budgets and levels of community support.

Hawaii’s budget, for example, was more than $48 million for the 2017-18 academic year, the last one available in the Knight Commission’s database of athletic spending. But Hawaii also plays Division I-A football in the Mountain West Conference and is responsible for travel subsidies for visiting teams as well as paying for its own travel, a condition of its conference membership.

Beyond that, there are two Division I-AA football schools in the Big West: UC Davis ($36 million budget in that survey) and Cal Poly ($28.8 million). And there are six non-football schools, whose expenses for that last reporting period ranged from UC Santa Barbara’s $23.8 million to CSUN’s $17.7 million.

Moreover, five Big West institutions were in the top 35 in percentage of subsidized athletic expenses (i.e., support from their campus administration) in that 2017-18 period, according to USA Today’s database. UC Riverside (91.09 percent) was No. 1 in the country, ahead of New Jersey Institute of Technology, followed by CSUN (82.07 percent, 21st), UC Davis (81.9 percent, 22nd), Cal State Fullerton (80.20 percent, 30th) and UC Irvine (79.4 percent, 35th). It’s not likely that those ratios have changed much since.

So while the amount a conference gets from the March Madness pool is generally predicated on how successful it has been (number of teams, number of victories) over a six-year period, even the minimum payment will help schools for which every dime matters.

The full payout to the Big West will include an automatic yearly payment of between $1.6 million and $1.7 million, which the conference uses as its administrative budget. The rest is allocated by various funding categories, and the conference’s board of directors (i.e., chancellors and presidents) will meet later in the spring to divide it among the schools.

It’s enough to make a commissioner – or a columnist – thankful that smartphones have calculators.

But the diverse nature of this conference brings into focus the skill required to navigate it through 28 years, and a membership that has included 26 different schools as either full or affiliate (single-sport) members.

Farrell “has been, in my opinion, the kind of leader that allows the membership to gather and communicate and work together,” UC Irvine athletic director Paula Smith said. “He’s provided great direction for us, he’s provided information regarding what’s happening in the industry, and he’s helped varied interests come to compromise and collective decisions. It’s not easy for someone to sit back and let that unfold, and not be an authoritarian type.

“If you look at the membership it’s varied, from the Cal States to the UCs to Hawaii, but I feel like the conference is homogeneous in manner. We all want to be in the business of collegiate athletics and be there for young people, and do things the right way. We collaborate to the best of our abilities and compromise where we can when that will help everyone go forward.”

That sort of collegiality helps a lot in times of crisis. The decisions two weeks ago to first play the conference basketball tournaments without fans and then to cancel altogether were done in consultation with the presidents and chancellors. And it was Farrell who returned phone calls and emails from those upset about the cancellations.

“I did hear from a couple of parents of student-athletes who were unhappy that they were not going to be allowed into the arena,” he recalled. “We explained to them our rationale for that.

“And then what kind of closed the circle was that when we actually went ahead and canceled the tournament on Thursday, I heard back from one of those parents who thanked us for doing that.”

Farrell and deputy commissioner Rob Halvaks, who also is scheduled to retire at the conclusion of this school year, can’t very well coast through this springtime of uncertainty. But the suspicion is that they will leave things better for the new leaders, whoever those might be.

And if they need to take a little extra time, so be it.

“I am ready for retirement,” Farrell said. “I’ve been kind of pointing toward this time for a while and I’m ready for it.

“But one of the things I’m hoping to do in retirement is to travel. Well, right now’s a bad time to be doing that.”

Jim Alexander is an Inland Empire native who started with his hometown newspaper, The Press-Enterprise, longer ago than he cares to admit. He's been a sports columnist off and on since 1992, and a full-time columnist since 2010. Yes, he's opinionated, but no, that's not the only club in his bag. He's covered every major league and major sports beat in Southern California over the years, so not much surprises him any more. (And he and Justin Turner have this in common: Both attended Cal State Fullerton. Jim has no plans to replicate Turner's beard.)

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